Criticism rolls off Harbaugh, Alex Smith

Once upon a time, Alex Smith heard the criticism. He knew he was unpopular among 49ers fans and disrespected by his coaches.

Those days are gone. A couple years ago, Smith perfected the art of shutting out the noise, of ignoring fans and critics and the annoying and unsupportive coaches.

Jim Harbaugh, if he ever had a problem dealing with criticism, those days were long, long gone by the time he became coach of the 49ers.

Unless the 49ers run the table this season, which seems fairly unlikely, there will be criticism directed at Harbaugh and Smith.

They will not hear it.

You critics, with your boos and your angry calls to radio shows and your opinions in newspaper columns, are so many flies on the windshield of Harbaugh and Smith’s ScrewYouMobile.

No two men in sports shut out the outside world better than these two. Together? Forget it. No man is an island, but these two are an island.

Harbaugh’s first task upon being hired to coach the 49ers was to court Alex Smith as his starting quarterback. Everybody knew that was a terrible idea. Terrible! Smith might be an OK quarterback someday, but not for the 49ers.

The team was likely to struggle anyway. Why struggle with a quarterback everyone was sick of?

Fifteen wins later, we critics see that maybe we were slightly off the mark.

It turned out that what Harbaugh and Smith saw was that they had the perfect temperament for their challenge, and for one another.

Both of them didn’t care what anyone outside their bubble thought, and each of them had unqualified faith in the other.

It was the perfect match. Smith needed a coach who had absolute faith in him, and Harbaugh might be the only coach in the world who would have fit that bill. Harbaugh needed a quarterback who had absolute faith and trust that Harbaugh knew the way.

That unqualified support for his quarterback, behind the scenes and in public, wasn’t Harbaugh’s response to the critics. It’s his M.O.

Smith watches and learns. Harbaugh never publicly criticized a player last season. Smith, in turn, never criticized a teammate or his coach, never second-guessed the limitations placed on him by Harbaugh, even when critics derided Smith as a “game manager.”

The other players appreciated that mutual support. It’s no fun when your coach and quarterback are taking shots at one another, in public, in the meeting rooms or behind one another’s back. The players picked up on the theme: We are a team.

When Vernon Davis, a sensitive and proud guy, went ignored early in the season, he chaffed and flinched, but he never whined. Under another coach, another quarterback, who knows?

Davis endured quietly until he started getting the ball.

Harbaugh and Smith developed their shells in similar ways. In 15 years as an NFL quarterback, Harbaugh came under plenty of criticism. He developed ideas on how a quarterback should be treated and how criticism should be dealt with.

Smith, in his first four years with the 49ers, came under enormous criticism from coaches and fans. By trial and error, he developed his own defense, which was to ignore ’em all. It probably helped him that Mike Singletary’s carping was so misguided and non-authoritative that it was easy to ignore.

Once you realize that the boos don’t matter and the criticism from a coach you don’t respect doesn’t matter, all that’s left is playing football.

This year there will be more tests. Colin Kaepernick lit up the Chargers Thursday night. A meaningless game, sure, except that it gave 49ers fans a glimpse of a quarterback who is less a manager and more a bomber.

That snapshot will pop up every time Alex Smith goes three-and-out or the 49ers misfire in the red zone.

At some point, this year or several years down the road, Harbaugh will make that change. When he does, he’ll do it in a way that leaves Smith’s dignity intact and let’s Kaepernick know he’s way too good to fail.

Harbaugh has been solidly behind Kaeperenick, never wavering in his public support of the kid as a solid backup with enormous potential. You almost forget that Kaepernick was a risky pick, a kid with no college pedigree, who runs too much and has an amateurish windup.

He’ll be Harbaugh’s guy, and we’ll believe. And if we don’t, neither one of them will care.